A tale of 2 bridges

The Martinez(VA)-Kassoff(MD) state highway road gangs are working on a redo of a bridge across the Potomac and the New York State Thruway Authority is working on a rehab of its bridge across the Hudson. They each issued their announcements within days this March. The NY toll road authority’s announcement of work on a rehab of the concrete deck of the Tappan Zee bridge emphasized that the work schedules are designed to cause minimal disruption to traffic. Work will be done mainly at night with no lane closures permitted in peak travel directions during the day.

However the Maryland and Virginia highway agencies which are engaged in a joint repaint job on the US-15 highway bridge over the Potomac at Point of Rocks MD/VA warn they will need one of the two lanes of the bridge 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the next nine months. They warn there will be delays in crossing of “at least 30 minutes” (Dr Gridlock was the appropriately titled conveyor of this news.)

Now the Tappan Zee bridge on the Hudson (6 lanes and 116,000 vehicles a day) is a much more important bridge than US-15’s across the Potomac (2 lanes and 10,000 vehicles a day). They are not completely comparable, we’ll concede. But the NY toll authority seems to be extremely motivated to keep its customers happy, whereas the sacrifice of 50 percent of the MD-VA bridge 24 hours a day and the state agencies’ willingness to impose half hour waits on drivers for three quarters of a year seems a cavalier disregard for the public. At 5,000 hours of waiting a day for 9 months at $4 an hour my calculator says that represents a loss of $5,475,000 to the public being imposed by Messrs Martinez and Kassoff. Of course some central Maryland/northern Virginia drivers will be diverted by this prospect to I-270/Beltway/I-66/Dulles Road in which case the Dulles Greenway that takes US-15 traffic will suffer a further loss of business.

Is this another VDoT effort at finishing off the Greenway?

The only other means to get across the Potomac is White’s Ferry. Does anyone smell a kickback from the ferry operator to someone in the state highway departments? (Joke only.)

We suggest that the Point of Rocks Bridge be turned over to a toll operator forthwith. We cannot believe a toll bridge operator would even spend a second considering a repaint job that involved a 50 percent closure during rush hours, and which planned half hour waits for motorists. We salute the NY State Thruway Authority for its concern for its customers and we will throw our great political weight behind it in any bid it may make to take over this abused Potomac river crossing. (Disclosure of editorial interest: It is our route to Dulles airport.)